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Originally Posted by Heather17
So I don't wonder if, as others have suggested, that AI is becoming less rare and potentially more of a business opportunity.
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Of course--I personally see huge business potential and revenues (and leadership/involvement!) in making huge changes in alumnae membership, including recruitment of members post-college. There are greater gains and opportunities to be made. However, the focus would need to drastically shift from collegiate and undergraduate programming to lifetime membership-- making us similiar to organizations like the Junior League. (Some leagues allow you to join at age 18. Others at age 21-- you have a few years of required active membership before moving into voluntary "sustainer" level where you have limited membership obligations-- but these are still obligations nontheless! You don't just coast on your lifetime membership.)
However, it seems that a good deal of research has gone into identifying membership trends, and we've observed that most collegiate members are likely to drop after their first year. I think right now there is much focus on improving collegiate programming to address why women aren't actively involved for all 4 years of college as they used to be (I think that has a lot to do with changes in the ways students learn, women's lib, what is considered a "traditional" student and general social change). Until the programming goes away from a primarily collegiate focus and more big-picture lifetime membership outside of "lifetime member in name only," I don't think this will be an across-the-board shift. Change is slow-- it takes a long time to implement policy changes that have such wide-scale impact (even if it is for the better), changing the members' perceptions of membership, changing the way we do recruitment, etc. The possibilities are endless.